Computer software development is a notoriously difficult task that has been the subject of much study. Specifically, it is very difficult to ensure that a particular computer program is completely free of errors (more commonly known as ‘bugs’ in the field of computer software). Although there has been some work done on creating methods of ‘proving’ that a particular computer program is free of bugs, such methods are generally only applicable to small simple computer programs. Most computer software development projects instead rely upon more imperfect methods of testing computer programs to locate (and subsequently remedy) bugs in computer programs.
Computer software is developed with the help of software development tools such as source code editors, source code to object code compilers, object code linkers, and object code debuggers. The better that computer software development tools become, the faster that computer software developers can develop computer programs and the more reliable those computer programs will be. Thus, great amounts of investment has been put into creating computer software development tools that allow computer software developers to create computer software in the most efficient and reliable manner.